Process of Elimination (POE)
In a perfect world, you’ll know how to work all of your Now and Later questions, quickly and accurately,
circling the correct answer among the choices. The ACT is not a perfect world. But even with a ticking
clock and a number 2 pencil in your sweaty hand, wrong answers can be obvious. POE can be a great
Plan B on Math when you’re stuck, or it may be the best way to find the correct answer on Science. But
even when you can’t narrow the answers to only one, using POE to get rid of at least one or two wrong
answers will substantially increase your odds of getting a question right.
The Power of POE
Very often, the quickest
way to the correct answer
is to eliminate the wrong
answer choices rather
than focusing on finding
the right one.
Pacing
The ACT may be designed for you to run out of time, but you can’t rush through it as quickly as possible.
All you’ll do is make careless errors on easy questions you should get right and spend way too much time
on difficult ones you’re unlikely to get right.
To hit your target score, you have to know how many raw points you need. Use the entire time allotted
where it will do the most good: Go slowly enough to avoid careless errors on Now questions, but go
quickly enough to get to as many Later questions as you need to hit your goal.
On each test of the ACT, the number of correct answers converts to a scaled score of 1–36. ACT works
hard to adjust the scale of each test at each administration as necessary to make all scaled scores
comparable, smoothing out any differences in level of difficulty across test dates. Thus, there is no truth to
any one test date being “easier” than the others, but you can expect to see slight variations in the scale
from test to test.
This is the scale from the free test ACT makes available on its website, ACT.org. We’re going to use it to
explain how to pick a target score and pace yourself.
Math Pacing
